I have an Nvidia Shield with Leanback launcher and a Chromecast with Google TV. I've also tried ATV launcher on my generic Android box.
it seems to me that none of the other launchers have the same wonderful aggregation feature that Google TV has. Being able to see my Netflix Amazon prime and BBC iPlayer shows and movies in the same recommended lists is great, saves time is intuitive and Powerful.
Also clicking on any of these recommendations gives me information about the actors and director of the show/movie and I can click on that to find other shows/movies that they have been in.
This one thing (aggregated recommendations and categorisation) makes Google TV far better for browsing if you don't already know what you want to watch or which service you want to use.
I just like having Disney plus visible because I do not have that service, but I am able to access whatever I like via "other means" if I really want.
What do you reckon?
That is a very nifty feature, but I'm not blown away by it. My appletv has been doing this for years, and frankly is much better at it. My hope for the Google tv was that it would be the one streaming device I would need. VPN support, sideloaded apps, full 4k 60 hdr support, great remote ... but it's just not it for me personally. I have been experiencing a ton of bugs since day one - by far most annoying relating to audio not playing in most apps.
In Netflix, prime, hulu, movies anywhere, and a few others programs start with no audio. In order to get audio I have to pause and resume playback several times until it kicks in. Watching a TV show? Get ready to do this every time an episode starts. Fun! Weirdly this doesn't affect live tv apps. Sideloaded ATTtv and BBC Iplayer work perfectly as well with live or on-demand content. And of course YouTube and twitch work perfectly as well.
Another annoying bug involves HDR. After watching any HDR content on Netflix, prime, cbs etc ... returning to the app menu or home screen doesn't correctly reset to an sdr color space. But it's not proper HDR either. It's a weird blown out, hyper-saturated image that resembles an old-school tv with the color dial cranked to max. The only way to remedy this is restart the Google tv through the menu, or a much quicker (but equally frustrating for the necessity) solution is to go to YouTube and play any HDR video. YouTube will correctly display HDR 10 content, and correctly switch back to SDR when exiting playback.
These are the 2 most annoying bugs I'm experiencing, but far from the only ones. It's so bad that I only really use the Google tv to watch YouTube and BBC Iplayer on it, as those are the only things it does that that my 3 year old appletv 4k can't.
Lastly, and this is an Android thing not specifically the Google tv, many Android apps don't support atmos and/or dolby vision. Some support one or the other, but few support both. It's a real bummer, as all I really want is a single device to handle all of my streaming, but there's not any device I've found that ticks all the boxes.